


Rattling Around

by lonelywalker



Category: The Art of Fielding - Chad Harbach
Genre: Age Difference, Canon Character of Color, Canon Gay Relationship, Couch Sex, Interracial Relationship, M/M, Older Man/Younger Man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-15
Updated: 2013-04-15
Packaged: 2017-12-08 14:58:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/762700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Guert and Owen try to work on their communication skills. Spoilers for most of the novel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rattling Around

It was fully dark by the time Affenlight left the Bremens’ house, politely turning down their kind insistences that he should stay for dinner and giving Contango a last affectionate scratch between the ears. Their home was certainly a beautiful one, fit for a college president and his books, if a little too big for a single person. But then Pella would be around, at least intermittently, and if she wanted to invite her boyfriend or other friends for dinner, then she’d have the room to entertain them.

Naturally, given the present circumstances, this was more than a small stretch of the imagination – Pella would never want to bring college friends home to meet her father if she could possibly avoid it, and was much less likely to even be there herself following the conversation-slash-argument they’d had this morning. Affenlight unlocked the Audi and sat down, pulling his phone from his pocket. Still, as long as she hadn’t skipped town and decided to go back to David, or to sleep on an old friend’s couch in Cambridge, surely they would eventually manage to work things out. 

There were no messages from Pella and he had no way to call her, but his phone did remind him of that missed call from Owen. He hadn’t left a voicemail message. 

A good father, he suspected, would break up with Owen and then hunt through Westish’s various dorms and college apartments until he found Pella. He’d tell her about the house and beg her forgiveness for both sleeping with a student and lying to her about it. He’d take her to dinner at Maison Robert, or even at Bau Kitchen if she didn’t mind the drive, and they’d make plans for being a real family again, for trying to get along the way they hadn’t in a decade. 

But _would_ a good father do that, really? Pella had made it clear she needed her space. She was twenty-three now, a married woman (at least on paper), not a sobbing eight-year-old who really just wanted to be comforted by her dad. He had to respect her wishes. And Owen? Well, yes, he should have told her, but plenty of children disapproved of their parents’ partners. There were wicked stepmothers and stepfathers aplenty across the nation. As much as he had to treat Pella like an adult, she would need to grin and bear his decisions too, however questionable they might initially appear.

It felt logical, the argument teased out like that in his mind, but the sense of unease in his stomach wasn’t abating. Perhaps it was less paternal concern than the three beers the Bremens had foisted on him. He thumbed his phone to dial Owen’s number.

“I’m sorry I missed your call,” he said when Owen answered. “I was in the middle of something.”

“It’s all right. I know you’re busy.” Wherever Owen was, it certainly wasn’t the baseball diamond. Much too quiet. And besides, even Owen probably forewent answering his phone in the outfield. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted to meet today. I went by your office but it was locked.”

Meet today? Affenlight had been so confounded by Pella’s revelations this morning that the rest of the day had passed in more or less a blur, to the extent he had to concentrate to remember what day it was. Monday. Presumably Owen had assumed that their four-thirty rendezvous on the love seat were still a regular appointment, even if they did feel like a gay porn version of _Groundhog Day_. “You don’t have practice?” 

“Coach told me to take it easy for the day,” Owen said. “Which means I’m trying to catch up with mountains of reading. Never mind batting, shifting these journal articles is more work than I’ve ever done in the weights room.”

“Ah.” Affenlight checked his watch. “Do you want to come over now? I’m just a few minutes away and I think the outside door is still unlocked. Unless you’re busy.”

“I’m just in the library.”

“You’re using your phone in the library?”

There was a smile in Owen’s voice. “I’ll be right there, Mr. President.”

Back on campus, Affenlight parked in his regular spot and assumed a cheerful smile as he strolled through the Small Quad to the public entrance of Scull Hall. It was, indeed, unlocked, although at this time he would be alone in the building. Well, except for the young man who was perched on the edge of Mrs. McCallister’s desk, reading through a sheaf of stapled papers. The relief Affenlight had been hoping for earlier came in a flood now, not from reasoned argument, but at the simple sight of Owen as he raised his eyes from the page and smiled.

Affenlight reached back, locking the door. “I didn’t think you wanted to meet like this anymore.”

“I don’t _only_ want to meet like this.” Owen tucked his papers neatly back inside his messenger bag. “Guert, just because we went to dinner doesn’t mean we can’t still spend time alone. The problem is when we only _ever_ spend time alone.”

“Oh,” Affenlight said. For all his years of dating experience, and for all dating Owen should be no different than dating any one of the dozens of women he’d spent time with over the years, he was still all-too-frequently left flummoxed.

Owen was looking at him curiously. “Are you all right? You seem… preoccupied.”

“I’m…” He lifted his hands from his sides, let them fall again. He felt exhausted, beaten. “Pella knows,” he said.

Owen didn’t say a word, just slipped down from the desk, took a step, and embraced him. He radiated warmth even through his sweatshirt, and somehow this simple act of being held seemed more intimate than anything they’d ever done before. Part of Affenlight wanted to rebel and pull away, annoyed at being treated like a child, someone who needed to be comforted. But he _did_ need to be comforted, would otherwise have spent the night alone, fantasizing about having Owen’s arms around him in this very way.

“Go and sit down,” Owen said finally, softly. “I’ll make some coffee. Or better yet, tea. Do you have any tea?”

Affenlight tried to remember Mrs. McCallister ever offering guests anything other than coffee. “I’m not sure.”

“I’ll look.” Owen pressed a kiss to his temple and released him, heading for the sink and the cabinets above.

Affenlight’s office was the way he had left it, desk covered in disorganized paper. This week he would have to make a real effort to focus. He’d meant to catch up yesterday, but instead had been distracted, worrying about Pella. Today he’d barely registered the results of the various meetings he’d had, his mind swirling with worry. His life must have been simpler once, in the days before Pella had arrived and Owen became a constant presence in his thoughts and dreams. He’d thought about Pella, of course, but it had been a vague, distant sort of concern. And he’d had girlfriends, but nothing serious and certainly nothing to preoccupy his every waking moment.

But had he been happier then? He folded his jacket over one of the spindle-backed chairs and sank down onto the love seat, loosening his tie. Pella and Owen both made him happier than he’d been in years. But they also each brought their own complications. Last winter had been lonelier, but also much less stressful.

Owen brought in two steaming mugs, handed one to Affenlight, placed the other on a chair, and walked back to lock the door. “Well, the tea may be old, but it tastes all right. I’ll have to gift you with some decent English Breakfast.”

Not a habitual tea drinker, Affenlight smiled faintly and took a sip as Owen pulled the chair over to use as a table and sat down next to him on the love seat, a reassuring hand against his back as though he were a sick child who’d just finished vomiting. But no, that was unkind, to think of someone who treated him with compassion that way. 

“I thought you’d told her,” Owen said.

Affenlight stared at him, uncomprehending. “No, I… Did you talk to her?”

Owen nodded. “Yesterday, briefly. She told Henry we’re sleeping together.”

“ _Henry_?” Perhaps simpler really was better. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t you call me? I didn’t sleep at all last night, worrying about where she was.”

Was it something to do with the weather? With spring? May had just dawned, and all the students seemed to be going mad. Even Owen, usually the picture of composure, appeared ill at ease. “As I said, I thought you had told her about us, and I was more worried about Henry last night. He’s depressed and he’s frightened, his parents won’t talk to him, and now Mike won’t either.” Owen set down his mug. “Guert, I appreciate that as a father you’re concerned about Pella, but I’m not sure how much you really want to know.”

He let himself smile. “O, believe me, there’s nothing she could have done in the last two days that’s worse than what she did when she was fourteen.”

“When Mike and I came back from Coshwale yesterday, Pella was with Henry in our room.”

Affenlight set his mug down too. “ _With_ Henry. I see.” He really didn’t. “Why Henry?” Not that there was anything wrong with Henry, he seemed like a nice young man, but he also seemed like the person Pella was least likely to ever be with, really in any sense, other than Owen himself. Unless sleeping with Owen’s roommate was a dig at him even more than it had to be a dig at Mike Schwartz.

He leaned back against the love seat and drew a hand over his eyes. He really hadn’t slept, and while three beers weren't enough to get him even halfway drunk, they probably weren’t helping. “Do you know where she is now?”

“Sorry, no. She just left. I assumed she was still staying with you.”

“No. She was rather adamant about that point this morning.” Affenlight sighed. “You should have called me.”

“You could have called me too, you know.” Owen didn’t sound angry, just as calmly assured as ever. “That’s why we exchanged numbers in the first place. You never even asked about our games yesterday.”

 _Baseball_. This season Affenlight had been the Harpooners’ most devoted fan, caught up in their struggles and suffering the agony of Henry Skrimshander’s recent troubles right along with the team. But now it seemed just like it had been to him before he’d fallen in love with their second-string right-fielder: a silly sport. “Sorry,” he said. “How were your games?”

Owen stood up, presumably sensing the utter lack of enthusiasm. He moved the chair back to its place. Neither of them had seemed very interested in the tea. 

“Don’t go,” Affenlight said. It sounded like begging, and it was. To see O walk out that door the way Pella had this morning would be too much for anyone to bear.

“I wasn’t planning to.” Owen sat back down, one knee drawn up onto the seat so he could face Affenlight, and began to unthread his tie. “We won twice. Two to one, fifteen to zero. I may have scored a hit or two. So on Thursday we’re going to the regional championship.”

Despite himself, Affenlight’s eyebrows raised. “Are you serious?” Never mind his position as said right-fielder’s lover – as president, he was overjoyed.

“Did you ever doubt us?” Owen laid a smiling kiss on his lips. “Everyone stepped up to the plate, so to speak. Maybe Henry just needs a break, time to regroup, but the schedule marches on.” He tossed the tie over his shoulder and got to work on the buttons of Affenlight’s shirt. “So, now. How _did_ Pella find out about us? Henry said she saw that register in my room, but that seems an awfully large leap to make.”

“I don’t know. She told me she saw us together at the game on Saturday.”

Owen frowned. “For a minute by the fence? We didn’t even touch.”

“I know.” At the time he’d badly wanted to brush fingers with Owen through the chain-link fence – after all, who in the thousand-strong crowd would be watching them rather than the action on field? – but in the end they’d done nothing beyond exchanging a few words. “But she’s my daughter. She knows me better than anyone. Perhaps I just looked like I’d spent the previous night having my ass reamed by a beautiful young student.”

Owen cast him a worried look, even as his fingertips trailed down Affenlight’s bare chest. “So I did hurt you.”

“No…” For a former English professor, he’d never found himself to be so bad at communicating as when he was with Owen. Affenlight tipped his head back and closed his eyes, breathing, letting himself focus only on the touch of Owen’s skin against his skin. “I’m sorry. I’m being terrible company today.”

He felt Owen’s lips press to his again, and this time the kiss lasted, deepened: tea on his tongue and marijuana on his breath. Affenlight had tried smoking pot in the seventies and never really got along with it, at least not as well as he’d got along with alcohol, but now it seemed like a worthwhile crutch to have on occasion. He brought his hand up to cup Owen’s cheek, smooth and undamaged. What would it be like to kiss him if he had stubble? A beard? Odd, but not distasteful… The idea of being with Owen had never repulsed him, just made him anxious about suddenly becoming an inexperienced virgin again at the age of sixty. But now they’d gone far beyond that.

“You didn’t hurt me,” he said when Owen came up for air, looking into those smoky gray eyes. “I would’ve thought that was obvious.”

Owen smiled, touching a finger to Affenlight’s lips. “Sometimes things only hurt the next day. But I’m glad you enjoyed it. I really enjoyed you, too. Take off your shirt.”

They’d never before undressed beyond whatever was necessary to suck and caress each other in their meetings, although of course they’d both been naked in the motel, surprised and delighted by mysteries revealed. Affenlight hesitated for a moment and then eased out of his shirt, folding it over the arm of the love seat. Owen was already pulling off his sweatshirt and t-shirt as one. 

How strange, Affenlight had thought, that it would be he, the distinguished president, who had the tattoo, rather than the young pot-smoking student. The students all had them these days, generally ugly and apparently meaningless, but he could imagine Owen marking himself with something elegant, something with meaning even deeper than beauty. 

Owen slipped out of his shoes, kneeling on the love seat. “Turn around,” he said. “You have so much tension in your shoulders it’s a wonder your head isn’t pounding.”

“How’s your head?” Affenlight asked, untying his own shoes so he could sit cross-legged, his back to Owen.

“Fine. It doesn’t look as if I’ll even have a scar. Pity. I’m unlikely to ever do anything else to make it seem like I had a thrillingly dangerous youth.” Owen kissed his neck as it met his shoulder and started to work on muscles that Affenlight hadn’t been conscious of being tight before. “You need to relax more often.”

“I try.”

“Without chemical aids. Come to my yoga class.”

Affenlight smiled, letting his chin hit his chest. “Me, doing yoga?”

“Why not? Too gay for you?”

“I think my walk by the lake every day is better for me.”

The way Owen’s fingers dug into his neck was possibly a comment on that idea.

By the time Owen was done, Affenlight certainly felt looser, and better in some not-entirely-physical sense too. Perhaps it was just that he’d been able to talk about Pella with someone else, perhaps that Owen always made him feel better. He leaned back into Owen so they could kiss. “Thanks.”

“This,” Owen said, his hands working Affenlight’s belt loose, “is why I wanted us to swap numbers. Not just to arrange assignations, but so we can talk. And if we talk and make love at the same time, so much the better.”

Affenlight watched Owen unzip his fly, watched as a slender brown hand slipped in, rubbing him through his undershorts. “You’re a saint.”

“Don’t you normally share things with your romantic partners?” Owen asked. He moved his hand under the elastic of Affenlight’s briefs, gently grasping his stiffening penis and freeing it from the fabric. 

_Share things_. The person who sprang to mind most readily was Sarah, Pella’s mom, and certainly they’d had the most sustained discussions about personal issues. But most of that had been after they’d stopped sleeping together and started being Pella’s parents. Even then, Sarah would abruptly change the subject if he brought much negativity into the discussion. In general he’d learned to share his emotional turmoil and grim moods with scotch and books and, more recently, the lake. 

“Not really,” he said, hoping that didn’t make him sound absolutely awful as a relationship prospect. “But if this is the result I should probably make a habit of it.”

Owen kissed him again. “I often find that the hand job is sorely underrated.”

“Really depends on the hand.” And Owen’s hand, warm and gentle and practiced, was really making him feel very, very good. Was it easier to know how to please your partner when you both had the same basic genitalia? Affenlight had discovered that giving a blow job involved a very sharp learning curve as opposed to receiving one, but then he’d never had to blow himself, had he? Speaking of which…

He turned around in Owen’s arms, reflecting that the love seat wasn’t big enough for one, let alone two six foot tall men to be lying around in it. Still, even if he had to bend his knees and jam them into the arm at least he got to press kisses to Owen’s stomach, feeling him already hard inside his jeans. Now it seemed past believing that he had sat and read to Owen for two weeks, never once touching him. Yes he’d enjoyed the intimacy of reading, and Owen had been in some pain, but still… If the same thing happened now he’d read with O cradled in his arms. He’d kiss every inch of him that wouldn’t hurt.

Affenlight eased down the jeans from Owen’s hips and Owen impatiently jerked them all the way off. _Two locked doors_ , Affenlight reminded himself, dampening down the sudden panic that sparked in his belly whenever he recalled the reality of the situation. There might be a thousand other people within a hundred feet, but none of them were even going to try to get into the building tonight. Even if Pella came home, which was doubtful, she couldn’t unlock the door. Which meant no one but Owen could see him take Owen’s cock in his mouth, and no one but Affenlight could see the way Owen lay back, eagerly pushing up with his hips, his ankles crossed in the small of Affenlight’s back. 

“Am I a terrible lover?” he’d asked Owen on Friday, his tongue loosened by many, many glasses of weak beer.

“You’re crazy,” Owen had said, kissing him with a laugh, “but you’re nowhere near a terrible lover.”

After that very first time, when he’d been uncertain and off-balance, stunned by the very reality of Owen’s desire for him, by the swirl of Owen’s tongue around the tip of his penis, he’d done his best to learn from whatever O did to him. Maybe it was technique, maybe it was just having a hot, wet mouth and not worrying so much that it paralyzed him with fear, but whatever it was, Owen was enjoying it. To the extent that Affenlight contemplated just how loud they’d have to be for anyone outside to wonder what in the world was going on.

“Okay,” Owen said, breathless, tugging Affenlight’s hair to make him raise his head. “If you’re _sure_ you liked being fucked, you should probably take off your pants.”

It wasn’t the first time Affenlight had been naked in his office – blame the instant juvenility that came with being made president of the very school where he’d once been a dumb jock footballer – but it was the first time he’d had company. Owen, though, seemed utterly at home in his own skin, going to fish a condom wrapper and a squeezy bottle of lubricant out of his bag. Which were probably still in there from Friday, although of course it was possible that Owen habitually carried such things with him. Doubtless that bag also contained camping supplies and a life raft.

“Are you going to bend me over my desk?” he asked, waiting. They could go upstairs, of course, but probably the time for that had passed and, besides, Pella really could suddenly appear there.

Owen glanced at the desk: centuries-old hardwood, topped with stacks of disorganized paper. “Do you want me to?”

“Not really.”

“Mm, kneel up on the couch. I think that’ll work.”

He did it and felt horribly exposed doing it, his back now to Owen and the door. In the motel they’d been together under blankets, cocooned and warm. Now, staring at the wall, he could feel the chill of the old building on his skin. “This would be a great picture to share with your friends on Facebook,” he said, forcing some levity.

Owen touched his shoulder. “Spread your legs a little more. Guert, I doubt I have to say this, but I do need you to know that I would never, under any circumstances, endanger your position or betray your confidence like that. Not even if we broke up. There, is that comfortable for you?”

There were about six things Affenlight felt he should be saying, but now he could feel the slide of Owen’s erection in the cleft of his ass and his mind was blank of everything else. He put out a hand to steady himself against the back of the love seat. “I’m okay.”

Owen’s hand stayed where it was, a reassuring presence anchoring him while the fingers of Owen’s other hand moved in increasingly fascinating ways. Affenlight had been almost _angry_ at how good it had been the first time, feeling fingertips stroking him there, slipping inside, and then Owen moving inside him, rubbing over nerves never before touched in the same way. He was sixty years old, almost sixty-one, and this twenty-one-year-old was teaching him things about his own body he’d never even suspected might be true.

“How did you get so good at this?” he’d asked in the post-coital glow of the motel, by which he meant: how was Owen so calm and confident, not just about sex, but about sex with his college president. It had taken until Affenlight was thirty to really adopt an absolutely fearless attitude to dating, and all that entailed, and that had still usually been with women his own age or younger – other students and then other lecturers.

Owen had shrugged: “What’s to be bad at?” he’d said, and ruffled Affenlight’s hair. Affenlight had felt just as baffled as he’d once been as a teenager, watching the rest of his high school football team slip off from parties with girls while he walked home alone and sober. 

So now Affenlight braced an arm against the back of the love seat, closed his eyes, and narrowed his focus to encapsulate only Owen’s slippery fingers as they stroked him and gently slid inside, grasped by muscles Affenlight forced to relax. _Forcing_ anything to relax was generally a bad way to go about it, but he tried to think about breathing and about Owen, lovely Owen, aroused and achingly hard and needing him. He should have had a couple more beers.

There was a pause, as Owen rolled on the condom, and the sudden cold of more lubricant and then Owen pushing inside him. The strangely intense pressure made Affenlight’s spine tingle between his shoulder blades and, despite the biology degree on his office wall, he had no idea why. He stroked himself, his penis suddenly feeling heavy and full, to balance out the unfamiliarity that was almost like pain until Owen eased out and then in once more, beginning to thrust, to really fuck him, and Affenlight could breathe again.

“You have such a nice body,” Owen was murmuring, which Affenlight thought had to be blatantly false, especially compared to the ripped models starring in gay porn these days, but maybe he at least felt good inside. “Are you okay? Is this good for you?”

Affenlight nodded. “Uh huh.” Maybe he needed to actually watch some gay porn, although if it was anything like straight porn it probably wouldn’t be all that instructive. He’d been frustrated in the past by sexual partners who just lay there like so much wet newspaper, but he had little idea what he could do to make this better for Owen, to differentiate himself from any other man with an asshole, other than staying where he was.

The slide, the friction, the force of Owen’s hips against him: he wanted to immortalize it all, engrave it in his memory the way Owen was – had to be – engraving it in his flesh. The lights of the office seemed far too harsh when his eyes blinked open, seeing the lines being made on the rich leather by sweat dripping from his hair. His arm was killing him, taking the brunt of Owen’s increasingly urgent thrusts, but the rest of him felt too good to say a word, that tingle in his spine gradually fanning out, the heaviness in his penis blossoming into a deeper, more pleasurable warmth. “ _Owen_ ,” he said, more like a breath than a word, and Owen’s absurdly warm, steady hand reached around to take care of him.

There was a strange relief in having no or little control, caught between Owen’s cock and Owen’s hand, the pleasure from both radiating deeper and hotter than he could recall experiencing before, his climax a spurting white against the dark leather of the love seat that made him lean in, resting his head against the cushion as his body pulsed tightly around that unbelievably hard length inside him that was Owen.

Owen came saying his name, fucking into him in a way that really almost hurt now, and Affenlight imagined feeling Owen’s come inside him until he remembered the condom. Owen slumped against him, hands clasped around his chest, cheek pressed between his shoulders, still inside him. As the glow of orgasm faded, Affenlight’s arm was cramped, his thighs sore, knees protesting even as he told himself that being breathless now was nothing to do with being old or unfit, and everything to do with having just been fucked by a beautiful college athlete and scholarship student.

Owen, thankfully, straightened up soon enough, taking his not-inconsiderable weight off and allowing Affenlight to try to remember how to stand up. 

“Well,” Owen said, tying a careful knot in the condom. “You really _should_ wash the couch now.”

It was Owen, though, who threw on his clothes and unlocked the door to go and find some Windex among Mrs. McCallister’s supplies while Affenlight pulled his pants back on and sloppily buttoned his shirt. He just had to walk upstairs anyway and fall into bed, or the shower. He lit a cigarette and watched Owen mop up sweat and semen, and whatever else had probably landed there since time immemorial. “Thanks,” he said, passing the cigarette to Owen.

Owen smiled. “Feeling better?”

He was sure Student Health had a spiel about how problems couldn’t be solved with sex or drugs, but for the moment Owen, three beers, and a cigarette seemed like the most ingenious solution in the world. He doubted even Pella, Owen’s mother, and the entire board of trustees bursting in at that moment could make him feel anything less than pleasantly buzzed. 

“You could come upstairs,” he said once Owen had dried off the couch and they were sitting there once more, arms around each other’s shoulders. It wasn’t a good idea for many reasons, but the last time they’d made love they’d also fallen asleep together and Affenlight looked back almost as fondly on that as he did the sex. 

Owen passed him back the almost-done cigarette. “You’re a sweetheart, but I have studying to do. And possibly a Henry to counsel. Rick texted me just before you called. Apparently Henry quit the team.”

“He quit?” Affenlight wasn’t sure how to feel about this. “For good?”

“Well, with his recent issues plus his current estrangement from Mike due to yesterday’s activities, perhaps it’s not so surprising.” Owen frowned. “As I said, he might just need a break, time to recover and cool off. There’s always next season.”

“But?”

“But I’m concerned. You don’t know what kind of schedule Henry keeps, Guert. I’ve had three years of him getting up at five, chugging down whey protein. Of course he goes to classes, but he never socializes, never dates. The game is his entire life and his entire future, as he sees it. I don’t know that he’s _capable_ of taking a step back.”

Affenlight leaned over to extinguish the cigarette in one of the cold mugs of tea. “Well, we have counselors on campus for this sort of thing. People to talk to.”

“I know you’re biased in favor of the institutional option, but…” Owen sighed. “You know, perhaps you’re right. I just hope he’s home when I get there. I have no idea where he spent Saturday night, and last night he might as well have been comatose.”

“If there’s anything I can do…” He felt bad for monopolizing Owen’s time with his own concerns about Pella. Maybe a missing daughter trumped a friend having an existential crisis, but you never could tell. At least with Pella he could be reasonably sure she’d land on her feet. 

Owen gave his shoulder a squeeze. “I’ll text you. Call me tomorrow? I don’t want to disturb your meetings.”

Affenlight wanted to talk to him for so much longer, about the implications of Pella and Henry’s sudden knowledge, about the Bremens’ house, even though that was perhaps an uneasy subject too. But he nodded. “All right. If you see Pella…”

“I shall snare her in my trusty butterfly net and deliver her unto you unharmed.”

They kissed and Owen left, swinging his bag over his shoulder and fiddling with his phone. No doubt when he unlocked the outer door and wandered out into the Quad he’d look so much like any other student that no one would even wonder what he had been doing in there. Still, Affenlight made himself get up and re-lock the door before eliminating the evidence of their evening rendezvous, washing up the mugs, stashing away the Windex, and taking the trashcan to dispose of the used condom and wrapper upstairs. 

Pella wasn’t there, not even to interrogate him about why his shirt was half unbuttoned and what on earth he was doing carrying the can around. He emptied it into the trash disposal and sat down gloomily on her bed. The guest room bed, he supposed it was now. Neither his cell nor the landline indicated any new messages. He hadn’t thought to check his e-mail downstairs. 

He missed her, although they hadn’t spent much time together lately. He missed Owen, although Owen had only been gone for five minutes. It was still early, or at least not late, and he could have a shower and settle down to read for a few hours. He should probably make some dinner, or order in, as he suspected his fridge was even emptier than he thought.

His phone dinged. He was almost disappointed when he saw it was from Owen:

_H not home._

Affenlight stood up and walked out to the window of his study, from whence he could see the windows of Phumber 405. Owen’s slender figure was visible as a lone silhouette behind drapes, his head bowed. Affenlight unbuttoned his shirt all the way, stared at the message again. What did Owen expect him to do? If he couldn’t track down his own daughter there was no way he could find Henry. He’d been failing at everything lately: at being a good father, at being a good president. Everything except being a good boyfriend to Owen, although he suspected that even with Owen he was a perennial C+ student.

He punched in a reply, remembering how much he hated texting.

_It’ll be ok._

Over in Phumber, Owen pushed back the drapes and opened the window. The flicker of flame in his cupped hand seemed to illuminate the entire world for just a second. Below, students walked in ones and twos through the Small Quad – a boy hurrying toward the library to return books, girls sharing a joke, lovers arm in arm.

Impulsively, Affenlight patted his jacket pocket and pulled out his own cigarette and lighter, pushing open the window enough that he could lean on the ledge as Owen was doing. 

They couldn’t be together tonight, and maybe Owen couldn’t even see him, but for a few minutes at least they could share in this lonely watch over Westish College, waiting for their loved ones to come home.

**Author's Note:**

> Unfortunately I messed up on one canon fact in this, which is that Guert does get a message from Pella before he goes to the Bremens' house, and so therefore he does know where she is. Changing the fic to line up with canon would be a huge problem at this point, so therefore this fic is unintentionally slightly AU. Sorry about that.


End file.
